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Mobilepayments:biome-trickortreat?

on 25 March 2015

One such company bringing iris scanning to the masses is eyeLock with its Myris product. The science behind iris scanning is arguably more reliable than fingerprinting in many ways, and while possibilities for iris scanning remain a new frontier, it can currently be used to protect email and computer login, as well as internet banking and shopping.

With both acceptance and adoption of mobile payments picking up pace, what is the next frontier?

Apple announced Apple Pay, its entry into the mobile payments market at the end of last year, and Spring 2015 marks the European launch. Mobile payments aren’t the future anymore; they’re the present – out there today, changing the way we shop. But if they are ‘the now’ already, what is next?

From a payment perspective we should be looking at biometrics as the next frontier. This may all sound a bit far-fetched for those still accustomed to taking out their debit card to pay for goods or services. Yet, biometrics is not something from the pages of a Philip K Dick novel –the technology is already being used around the world for a wide range of applications.

Fingerprint technology is currently the most commonly known form of biometric verification. In a nutshell, it works by matching the patterns of a fingerprint or the pre-scanned image. The image is never saved; it is in fact converted into an encrypted token, which in turn becomes a biometric key. The key, if ever compromised, cannot be re-fractured to produce the original image, making the solution secure.